


fake flesh

by fanonbrostrider



Category: Homestuck
Genre: A Lovely Mess of an AU, Family Feels, Gore, Interspecies War, Killer Robots, Murder, No Smut, Platonic Bonding, Robots
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-03
Updated: 2016-09-03
Packaged: 2018-08-12 20:33:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7948096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fanonbrostrider/pseuds/fanonbrostrider
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He crouched under the table, hand extended towards Dave as the child stared at his knees in blank exhaustion and fear. </p>
<p>"I'm not going to hurt you, Dave," Bro soothed, his fingers curling a little as if to gesture the human closer, "you know I wouldn't. You can trust me."</p>
            </blockquote>





	fake flesh

A man lay alone in the rays of a rising sun, strewn amongst the ruins of Austin, Texas. War had tore through every nook and cranny in the once nice city, scarring each and every building and dragging the ones it didn't straight down into the rubble strewn ground. This is where the man had lived, where he was when candy red ships came piercing through the stars’ call to battle, where he had been when a beast with gray skin and gnashing teeth had come at him too fast with some close range gun that had a field day tearing through the skin and flesh of his abdomen. There was no elegant death for a man who'd spent 37 years in the same city, just the pain of a gunshot and the last sunrise that would burn his skin if he was still alive by noon. Luckily, he probably wouldn’t be.

The heavy, thick clunk of something loud and metal against the pavement drew the injured human’s attention, making heavy eyes crack open and vision slowly focus on the massive, blinding figure glimmering in the dying man’s vision. At first, it seems like a mirage, the shine of a fake angel sent straight from the sun, but as the creature approached with sharpening clarity and a blinding glare off its reflective skin, it became obvious that whatever it was had to be a real being. Not a heavenly projection, as its long limbs and snapping claws soon showed, but something just a deadly and ten times more mortal. If the man could’ve moved away, he would’ve.

Instead he just shifted uncomfortably and let out a low wheeze of pain while the being crouched next to him, still looming over the human in size and shape and height as it angled its head towards him. He couldn’t quite say it was looking at him, no-- the beast had no eyes, for one, just a smooth black face that matched the rest of his bone-colored body, little streaks of orange glowing ever so softly throughout its body to accentuate something or another. Was it just for vanity, or did the orange serve a proper purpose that was harder to understand at face value? It would be a question this man would never have the answer to. His tongue dragged over his dry lips as he stared down at where a slow ripple seemed to be growing from around where the mouth should’ve started, watching in fascination and horror while a massive mouth split open and began to move. A low voice matched the movements of its mouth, a quiet rumble like a rolling storm out of its throat and past thick fangs.

“You’re dying.” 

It wasn’t a question. The creature's movements didn’t quite match the sounds he made, as if it wasn’t used to speaking. Like this was a new experience. Eyeing up its mouth, the man could definitely agree with that idea. “Yeah, I know I am.” A sticky hand rose from his stomach, and another coughing little wheeze made it out of his lungs. “I’m bleeding, ain’t I?”

“I guess. Sometimes organics get cuts and bruises and scrapes and bleed without dying, don’t you?” The man raised his eyebrow, but nodded anyways. “I guess all organic things bleed. If you stab a plant juices come out, so…” A failed joke, by the way the creature didn’t move an inch. The human frowned a little, head lolling back and eyes closing. “What are you, dude. You’ve got no taste in dumb jokes and no fuckin’ face. Ain’t right, ain’t right.” 

The creature twitched at his words, and dropped its head for a second. “I can’t quite say I’m an android, as those are supposed to resemble humans or trolls in my case, but I am a robot. I was named B R O,” the robot pointed at a small but capital little logo that had three letters of an alien language on its exterior, “which translates to Bro in your language. Who are you?”

The human let out a quiet scoff. “Derrick. Human. Like we established, almost dead.” The bot almost let out a huff of laughter, which instead came across as nothing but a soft crackle through its body. BRO scooted in closer to the near dead other, head hunching and an eye peeling into place on its white skull to scan the human for a few seconds before it eerily disappeared again. Derrick shuddered. “Yo, dude, that shit’s not cool. Keep your facial features out at all times or keep them hidden. Common sense.”

The bot didn’t respond, though, as one of its many three-pronged murder talons came sliding out of its back and ran the razor tip over the center of Derrick’s bloody shirt. It split beneath the prongs, and gave BRO a clear access point to the wound. Not that it would do anything to help, of course. It just allowed BRO to get a better sense of when the human in front of him was going to die, to get a better sense of what damage could kill a human versus just maiming it. Not that Derek would be much help to find out what happened to a human when you maimed it-- then again, BRO had that part down. It was made to murder, after all. When it spoke, its mouth didn’t come back out. “I prefer to keep my features sheathed when unnecessary. It’s not like I’m blind right now.” Its head tilted up towards Derrick, staring in his direction. “I can still see you.”

Derrick shuddered at that (trying to pretend his entire body didn’t writhe with the movement). Shit was creepier than he’d like to admit. “So the last thing I’m gonna see is a faceless tentacle-bot.” He muttered, only to be greeted with a shake of the head as BRO parted its mouth again. “This version of your eyes will definitely have me as their last sight, I promise you that this mask won’t be the last thing you ever see.” It paused. “Well, I don’t know. Maybe. The mechanics of shapeshifting to mimic another is confusing and terrible to dwell on.” At these words, Derrick shifted again, sitting up and leaning a little bit away from the staring robot. “Are you talking about mimicking me?”

BRO leaned back a little in disbelief. “I thought that was clear. I don’t want to mimic a rock next to your body, why would I do that?” It gave the weird semi-laugh mostly-static noise again. “I need a form like yours and since there won’t be a duplicate of you when you die, why not steal your form and bury you deep down below the ground? I don’t want to design my own humanoid-trolloid chassis. I’d like one already made.” It shrugged, pressing a massive but freezing cold palm against Derrick’s stomach wound and making him moan out in low pain. “It’s less of a hassle for me, and you don’t die. Or your appearance doesn’t. Everything else will, but that shouldn't come as a surprise.”

Derrick didn’t respond to that, not only losing energy with each syllable but frankly not yet accepting the fact that he was going to die in what looked to be minutes, if the robot’s blank expression and equally as blank words had anything to say. Maybe an hour at most, but even that was doubtful. BRO took this as a sign that the human was done for, removing its own blood slick hand to analyze the DNA and quickly compile a list of Derrick’s traits-- both physical and chemical, but mental was unimportant to the bot’s mission. He could come up with his own personality just fine without knowing exactly what Derrick was like-- as he’d said, a dead human wouldn’t matter if BRO took over his body. 

After a few minutes of Derrick’s raspy wheezing and BRO’s silent analyzing, the bot’s skin began to shimmer, making the human grunt and squint at the other’s skin began to change. It was like a chameleon but mechanical, fwipping softly as miniscule panels flipped over and shifted all over its body and began to slowly steal Derrick’s body. His dark eyes watched behind his shades as BRO’s skin bubbled with a dark human flesh, his face growing features, as amber eyes and full lips filled the spaces that were usually blank. The layer of wire mesh and pseudo-rubber laid underneath BRO’s skin grew slowly into a nose, into eyebrows and eyelashes, a black tongue pushing his jaw apart just a little as the thick rows of sharp teeth retracted to leave only one set in its mouth. Its hands grew calloused and long, scars and tattoos both carving into its skin as dark hair grew from its skull, cascading over its still unnatural looking black sclera eyes in thin waves into BRO pushed the stands back to rest on his skull in a mirror of Derrick’s. The human stared on in horror as the bot flat out stole his appearance, down to the little scar on his lower lip from when he’d been a kid and dripped on the pavement. It was… wrong. Unnatural, to have his appearance stolen from him like that. 

Opening his mouth to object, Derrick soon found sharp nailed fingers in his mouth and pressing his tongue down to keep him from biting or talking back while BRO examined its new masculine form. “This’ll suit me-- the musculature will excuse my impressive strength, and the size of your body fits my height well. If not a little small.” BRO drew his tongue over his lips in thought, dry metal scraping softly against almost-rubber as Bro looked into the human’s eyes through his sunglasses. A long cable and the three prongs attached came slithering out from Bro’s back like a sentient appendage, plucking the angular shades off of Derrick’s nose and pressing against his stomach wound while Bro adjusted the sunglasses with a nod. 

“I think these suit me, don’t you?” He asked, getting nothing but a weak sounding noise of pain while the sharp and thin talons pressed agonizingly slowly into the wound with a slight twist that made it all the worse. “Angular, just like the rest of me. Or, I mean, as angular as an organic form can get. Which isn’t much. I don’t know how you managed to survive this long without decent weapons. Fists don’t do much.” Bro blinked his dark eyes, staring at Derrick for a few more moments before the cable plunged in and out of the human in a second, evisceration and lacerations killing him almost instantly. Better than a drawn out death by far.

With his duplicate dead, Bro stripped the body and hacked it up, burrowing the corpse underground after changing into the ratty and bloody clothes that wouldn’t seem too out of place in a situation like this. Well, except for the obvious massive stomach hole and blood, but he’d explain his way around that. He’d learn to explain his way around a lot of things, of course, if he wanted to pass as human-- not out of a want to be human, no, but as a need to blend in with the crowd when rumors began to spread of an android picking off the human and troll races one by one. 

A sunset began to fall upon the hot land formerly known as Texas, and Bro stood alone amongst the rubble to watch the star set and expose millions of white pinpricks in the sky. Some humans fantasized that those were their dead loved ones, twinkling and watching out from above. Bro took the moment of night to let his head fall back and stare up at the sky, the more technological parts of his vision falling away to sit in the mock silence and starshine for a few short minutes. He couldn’t see that, he decided. The stars were terrifying lights only visible when the sun disappeared, nothing more. Thinking anything else along those lines would be a waste of his time.

Bro’s head returned to its position staring forward, and his feet began to move in that thick thump of his steps, only muffled by the rubber of stolen sneakers covered in bloody constellations.

**Author's Note:**

> updates WLL be infrequent as fuck because honestly. whose really reliable these days  
> find my tumblr @fanonbrostrider and follow for more gentle striders and asks abt this world


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